using the photoshop toolbox - pearson educationchapter 3: using the photoshop toolbox the toolbox...

3USING THE PHOTOSHOP

TOOLBOX

I N T H I S C H A P T E R

Using the Options Bar 44

Using the Selection Tools 45

Using the Crop and Slice Tools 46

Using the Retouching Tools 46

Using the Painting Tools 49

Using the Drawing and Type Tools 51

Using the Shape Tools 53

Using the Annotation, Measuring, and Navigation Tools 54

Selecting Foreground and Background Colors 56

Changing View Modes 56

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Chapter 3: Using the Photoshop Toolbox

The toolbox has gone through many incarnations since Photoshop was first introduced. More tools

have been added and some modified and combined. Photoshop also shares most of the same tools as

ImageReady, with a few differences that you’ll see later. This chapter is a reference on each of the

tools. Skim over it for just the tools you are trying to learn or read it straight through. Many tools

have a keyboard shortcut assigned to them to access them immediately without having to locate

them on the toolbox. When you hover your mouse over tools in the toolbox, a ToolTip gives you the

name of the tool and the keyboard shortcut bound to it (see Figure 3.1). Some tools actually have

groups of tools hidden underneath them. You can tell whether there are hidden tools if an arrow is

fixed in the lower-right corner of the tool’s button.

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Figure 3.1A ToolTip appears when themouse pointer hovers over a toolin the toolbox.

USING THE OPTIONS BARWhen you have chosen a tool from the Toolbox, look in the Options bar for ways to apply settings to

the tool. As you select a particular tool, the Options bar shows the settings for that tool in that con-

text. So the Options bar always has different options available depending on the tool selected. Not all

tools have options you can change, but most of them have some options you can change in the

Options bar.

Understanding Paint OptionsThere are painting options available when one of the paint tools is selected. Paint tools include the

Brush, the Pencil, the Gradient, and the Paint Bucket tools. Options you can change for these tools

are the mode (which is the blending overlay effect as the tool paints), the opacity, and the flow, to

name a few. Opacity settings for painting with these tools enable you to paint with a transparent ink,

with one that is completely opaque, and with every percentage between.

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Using the Select ion Tools

Understanding Type OptionsAfter you select one of the type tools, many options are available in the Options bar. Choose a font

family from the font family menu. In Photoshop CS2, a preview of your font families shows up in the

menu. If different font styles like Bold and Italic or Oblique are built into the font, those are available

under the font style menu in the Options bar. Change the point size of the font from the Font Size

menu. You can select one of the sizes in the menu or type your own value in the box. The high-

lighted text in the type layer is updated; if no type was selected, the next characters typed use

these settings. When you use the Character and Paragraph palettes, these options and more are

available, but the convenience of the Options bar is what makes it so valuable.

Many other options are available, depending on the tool selected. Although this book cannot cover

all these options in detail, you will explore some of them as the tools are covered in the following

pages.

USING THE SELECTION TOOLSThe Selection tools are used to designate areas that you will be cutting out, cropping, painting within,

or applying filters to. The area not selected is usually unaffected when you manipulate the image in

any of these ways. When a selection is made around an area of the image, you will see what is often

referred to as marching ants or the selection marquee running around the edge (see Figure 3.2).

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The following is a summary of the Selection tools:

• Rectangular Marquee (M): This tool creates a rectangle-shaped selection area. Holding the Shift

key while drawing constrains your rectangle to a square shape.

• Elliptical Marquee (M): This tool makes an oval or ellipse-shaped selection. Hold the Shift key

to constrain your selection to a circle.

• Single Column Marquee (M): This tool selects a one-pixel–wide line that runs the height of the

canvas.

• Single Row Marquee (M): This tool selects a one-pixel–tall line that runs the width of the

canvas.

Figure 3.2A rectangular marquee drawnin the canvas.

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• Move (V): This tool moves the content of the layer you

are working with.

• Lasso (L): Use this tool to draw a freeform selection.

• Polygonal Lasso (L): After you select this tool, click,

release, and drag the image to mark the corners (and

draw the edges) of a polygonal selection.

• Magnetic Lasso (L): With an image on screen, this tool

follows the contours of part of an image as it creates a

selection marquee. It’s one useful way to cut out a sub-

ject from its background.

• Magic Wand (W): This tool selects parts of the image by

color similarity. Adjust the Tolerance setting in the

Options bar to select more or fewer of the surrounding similar colors.

USING THE CROP AND SLICE TOOLSThe Crop and Slice tools are used to separate and eventually extract or use part of the image that is

most important. Cropping takes out everything outside your cropping area. Slicing an image into

multiple areas makes smaller image tiles from the main image.

• Crop (C): Click and drag with this tool to create an adjustable crop area of your image. Press

Enter to crop the canvas to your rectangular area. Press Esc to cancel the crop. After you crop

your image, part of the image is gone; make sure that if you save over the original image, you

won’t need the content you have cropped out.

• Slice (K): Used for creating web images, the slice tool creates rectangular slices from which you

can export individual graphics. Build web button interfaces in one canvas and save to sliced

areas for your web page.

• Slice Select (K): Select your image slices and adjust the size of the slices by moving the handles.

Hold down the Shift key to select multiple slices at once.

USING THE RETOUCHING TOOLSOne of the most important benefits of Photoshop is your ability to retouch images to improve or per-

fect them. Frankly, the trickery and deception is quite fun. These tools help you patch and heal tears,

scratches, and even red eyes from erratic camera flashbulbs:

• Spot Healing Brush (J): Click on a blemish in a photograph and this tool samples pixels in the

area around the blemish to blend it out. This is similar to the Healing Brush tool, but with the

Spot Healing Brush you do not need to select a source area.

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Like the marquee tools, manyother tools share the same key-board shortcut. To alternatebetween the different tools whenthis situation exists, hold downthe Shift key when pressing theshortcut key on the keyboard.Pressing this key combinationseveral times drills down throughthe tools nested together; theselected tool’s icon shows up inthe toolbox.

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Using the Retouching Tools

• Healing Brush (J): Select this tool and hold the Alt key (in Windows) or the Option key (on the

Mac) as you click to select a source area; then click on a blemish in a photo, such as a wrinkle

on someone’s face. The Healing Brush blends out the blemish by sampling pixels from the

selected source area.

• Patch (J): Draw a marquee with the Patch tool or other marquee tools. Then click in the selected

area with the Patch tool and drag the selection around the canvas. Wherever you drag will be

visible through the selected area, enabling you to patch and blend that area with another part

of the image.

• Red Eye (J): New in CS2, the Red Eye tool enables you to remove red eye with one click. Red

eye is common in photos taken with a flash. This unfortunate red reflection from your eye can

be scary, and removing it used to take a few steps in previous versions of Photoshop. Now, sim-

ply click in the middle of the subject’s red eye with the Red Eye tool for a quick removal; click

anywhere in the image to search the image for redness to remove. Because this tool couldn’t

possibly have knowledge of the original color of your subject’s eyes, the color change is really a

desaturation of the red color and a slight darkening. The effect looks natural, but that doesn’t

prevent you from altering the eye further using the Burn tool or some other paint tools. In the

Options bar, set the percentage of Pupil Size and Darken Amount.

• Clone Stamp (S): Clone areas of an image into another part of an image with this tool. Press

and hold the Alt key (in Windows) or the Option key (on a Mac) and click a source area. Then

paint within another area of the image and watch the tool blend the source area into the desti-

nation area (see Figure 3.3). Works best with a soft-edged brush.

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• Pattern Stamp (S): Paints a pattern into your image where you paint with this tool. Choose a

different pattern to clone in the Options bar using the pattern picker. Adjust the brush size and

hardness, opacity, and flow, and the pattern is painted using those options. Enabling the

Impressionist check box distorts the pattern as it is painted.

Figure 3.3Cloning part of an image withthe Clone Stamp tool.

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• Eraser (E): This tool erases the content on the layer you are working (see Figure 3.4) and reveals

the background color underneath when erasing in the Background layer.

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Figure 3.4The Eraser tools.

• Background Eraser (E): This tool erases to transparency even on the Background layer of your

image.

• Magic Eraser (E): This tool detects and erases areas in a similar color range. Adjust the

Tolerance setting in the Options bar to select more or fewer of the adjacent areas.

• Blur (R): This tool enables you to brush areas (see Figure 3.5) and blur only those areas. It aver-

ages the pixel color and contrast of surrounding pixels to create a “softer” transition between

the pixels and, consequently, the blur effect.

Figure 3.5The Blur, Sharpen, and Smudgetools.

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Using the Paint ing Tools

• Sharpen (R): This tool sharpens edges by creating more contrast between the pixels you brush

over. This increased contrast creates the effect of a sharper edge.

• Smudge (R): Click on the image, hold the mouse button, and drag to smudge pixels. Like paint

or pastels, this tool creates a realistic smearing of the pixels.

• Dodge (O): This tool mimics a photographic technique that underexposes or lightens parts of

the image you brush over.

• Burn (O): This tool mimics the photographic technique that overexposes or darkens the parts of

the image you brush over.

• Sponge (O): This tool saturates or desaturates areas of the image you brush over. Adjust the

Flow percentage in the Options bar to weaken or strengthen the sponge effect.

USING THE PAINTING TOOLSThe Painting tools in the toolbox are used to paint pixels in the canvas. You can paint in an empty

canvas and onto existing image layers. Using the Options bar, choose a brush size and adjust the

hardness of the brush edge.

• Brush (B): Paint into your picture using this tool (see Figure 3.6). Adjust the Flow and Opacity

settings in the Options bar to weaken or strengthen the effect of the brush. Select different

brush styles from the Brushes palette. Hold down the Shift key and click in parts of your image

to create straight, connected strokes.

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• Pencil (B): Draw pencil strokes in your image with this tool. Similar to the Brush tool, the Pencil

tool maintains a hard edge and has no flow adjustments. Hold down the Shift key and click in

parts of your image to create straight, connected strokes.

Figure 3.6The Brush, Pencil, and ColorReplacement tools.

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• Color Replacement (B): Select a foreground color and

replace colors by painting in the canvas with this new-to-

CS2 tool. Colors similar to where the crosshairs are posi-

tioned are replaced with the foreground color. Adjust the

Tolerance levels and Limits in the Options bar.

• History Brush (Y): This tool paints back the portions of

your image to the selected history state in the history palette (see Figure 3.7).

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The History Brush cannot paintback portions of an image afteryou close and reopen the imagefile.

Figure 3.7The History Brush tools.

• Art History Brush (Y): Use this tool to paint your image back to any selected history state using

one of ten paint styles that you can select from the Options bar. Adjust the brush size and

shape, tolerance, and mode for different artistic effects.

• Gradient (G): Select this tool (shown in Figure 3.8) and click and drag in your image to create a

gradient ramp across the canvas or selection area. In the Options bar, select from five gradient

types and choose from several premade gradient libraries, or create your own custom gradient

color ramp.

• Paint Bucket (G): Use this tool to click and fill areas of your image with the foreground color.

Adjust the Tolerance level in the Options bar to fill more or fewer adjacent pixels of similar color

with the Paint Bucket tool. In the Options bar, if the Contiguous check box is disabled, even non-

adjacent pixels of similar color are filled.

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Using the Drawing and Type Tools

USING THE DRAWING AND TYPE TOOLSThe Drawing and Type tools create and alter vector objects. Drawing tools work on vector paths,

which are vector-based outlines you can turn into selections. Using the Options bar, choose whether

to draw paths or shape layers. Type is created in type layers that can be transformed and warped

and even set along paths.

• Path Selection (A): Use this tool to move entire paths around the canvas as a single object. The

path or shape layer retains its shape.

• Direct Selection (A): Use this tool to select and move individual points and Bézier handles of a

path or shape layer.

• Pen (P): Create paths with the Pen tool (shown in Figure 3.9). Single-click to create individual

points to form the path. Click, hold, and drag to create a Bézier curve when drawing a path.

• Freeform Pen (P): With this tool, click, hold, and draw a path. Points of the path are created

automatically.

• Add Anchor Point (P): Use this tool to click part of a path to add a point to the path. Adding an

anchor point to your path or shape layer allows for more detail in the path or shape.

• Delete Anchor Point (P): Use this tool to click a point of a path to remove that point from the

path.

• Convert Anchor Point (P): Single-click a point of a path to convert it to a corner point. Or click

and drag to convert it to a curve point. Or Option-click (Mac users) or Alt-click (Windows users)

and drag to convert it to a combination point.

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Figure 3.8The Gradient and Paint Buckettools.

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• Horizontal Type (T): The Horizontal Type tool (shown in Figure 3.10) is the default Type tool.

Click and drag to make a text box. Type your text with the keyboard to create text in the fore-

ground color. Use the Options bar to set the font, size, and other text properties. Open the

Character and or Paragraph palettes for more typography options.

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Figure 3.9The Path tools.

Figure 3.10The Type tools.

• Vertical Type (T): This tool is similar to the Horizontal Type tool except that the type stacks ver-

tically, and the text direction goes from right to left for Asian languages.

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Using the Shape Tools

• Horizontal Type Mask (T): This tool is similar to the Horizontal Type tool, but a selection area is

created rather than actual type. Although you can paint within the type selection area, adjust-

ing the type options is not allowed after type is created.

• Vertical Type Mask (T): This tool is similar to the Vertical Type tool, but a selection area is cre-

ated rather than actual type. Although you can paint within the type selection area, adjusting

the type options is not allowed after type is created.

USING THE SHAPE TOOLSShape tools work in three ways (see Figure 3.11): In the Options bar you can choose to create a

shape layer, a path, or a Fill Pixels shape.

A shape layer is a fill layer linked to a vector mask. This means you can double-click the fill layer in

the Layers palette and change the fill color of the shape. A shape layer can also be resized infinitely

because of its vector properties.

Selecting Paths in the Options bar before drawing your shape creates a path from the shape you

draw. This creates a colorless vector shape that can be resized later without losing quality. You have

all options available from the Paths palette when creating a Paths shape.

A Fill Pixels shape uses the foreground color and creates a bitmap shape on the current layer. This is

a raster shape and if used in an image layer, is flattened over the image contents.

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Figure 3.11The Shape tools.

The following is a summary of the Shape tools:

• Rectangle (U): Creates a rectangle shape using one of the three options from the Options bar.

Hold down the Shift key to constrain it to a square when drawing the shape.

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• Rounded Rectangle (U): Creates a rectangle with rounded corners. In the Options bar adjust the

corner radius options to suit your needs. Hold down the Shift key to constrain the shape to a

square.

• Ellipse (U): Creates an ellipse or oval shape. Hold down the Shift key when drawing to create a

perfect circle.

• Polygon (U): Creates a polygon shape. Choose the number of sides in the Options bar to draw

the polygon of your choice.

• Line (U): Click, hold, and drag to create a straight line. Hold down the Shift key to constrain your

line to a perfect horizontal, vertical, or 45-degree angle. Adjust the weight of the line in the

Options bar.

• Custom Shape (U): Choose the Custom Shape tool; in the Options bar, click the Shape pop-up

menu and choose from one of the shape icons. Click the fly-out menu to load a new shape

library into the options. To create your own custom shape, draw a vector path in your image.

Select the path from the Paths palette, and then choose Edit, Define Custom Shape. Name your

shape; it will appear in the Shapes library for later use.

USING THE ANNOTATION, MEASURING,AND NAVIGATION TOOLS

The following list details the Annotation, Measuring, and Navigation tools:

• Notes (N): Click and drag with this tool to create a virtual sticky note for the image (see Figure

3.12). When you’re finished typing the text of the annotation, click the close button on the note.

Drag the note around by clicking and dragging the note’s icon. Open the note by double-clicking

it. Change the note’s color in the Options bar. Notes are nonprinting elements.

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Figure 3.12The Notes and AudioAnnotation tools.

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Using the Annotat ion, Measuring, and Navigation Tools

• Audio Annotation (N): Select this tool and click in the canvas to create an audio recording.

Speak into the computer’s microphone to record your comments about the design and when fin-

ished, click Stop to finish recording. Drag the speaker icon to position your annotation anywhere

in the canvas.

• Eyedropper (I): Use the Eyedropper tool (see Figure 3.13) to click and add a color from an image

into the foreground color swatch in the toolbox. Open the Color and Info palettes to see the

CMYK or RGB color values live as you click and drag across the canvas.

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Figure 3.13The Eyedropper, Color Sampler,and Measure tools.

• Color Sampler (I): Click in the image with the Color Sampler tool and get up to four separate

color values. A crosshairs icon is placed on the image wherever the Color Sampler is used. Click

and drag the crosshairs icon to reposition them elsewhere in the canvas. Open the Info palette

to see the four sampled color values.

• Measure (H): Click, hold, and drag this tool across the canvas to create a measurement line.

Hold down the Shift key to draw a straight horizontal, vertical, or 45-degree–angle line. Open

the Info palette for line distances.

• Hand (H): Use the Hand tool to move your view of the canvas when you have zoomed in on the

canvas. This is helpful when you are working on tiny areas across most of your entire image. To

access the Hand tool quickly, press and hold the space bar; the Hand tool remains accessible

until you let go of the space bar.

• Zoom (Z): Use the Zoom tool to zoom in and out of the canvas. Hold down the Alt key (in

Windows) or the Option key (on the Mac) to zoom out. For zooming using only the keyboard,

press Ctrl++ to zoom in in Windows („-+ on the Mac) or Ctrl+- to zoom out in Windows

(„— on the Mac). Use the Navigator palette for more controls for zooming your image.

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SELECTING FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUNDCOLORS

Click the foreground and background color swatches in the toolbox to choose a color for working in

your images (see Figure 3.14). Use the foreground color when you’re painting with Brush tools or cre-

ating type on your page. Use the background color when you’re deleting or erasing portions of the

Background layer. The background color will be revealed underneath the portions you erase. Swap

the foreground with the background color by clicking the Switch arrow just above and to the right of

the color watches, or by pressing X on the keyboard. To set your colors to default black and white,

click the Default Foreground and Background colors button just below and to the left of the color

swatches or press the D key on the keyboard.

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Figure 3.14Click the foreground or back-ground color swatch to displaythe Color Picker, from which youselect colors. Click in the colorramp and your color appears ineither color swatch on thetoolbox.

CHANGING VIEW MODESChange the way Photoshop views the canvas area by selecting one of the three view modes

(press the keyboard shortcut F):

• The default view mode is Standard Screen Mode. Photoshop appears in a window, and any

open images appear in windows, too. This is the most common mode in which people use the

program.

• Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar maximizes Photoshop, and also maximizes the image you

have opened in your monitor. The Menu Bar is still available at the top of your screen, but the

Photoshop title bar is hidden.

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Changing View Modes

• Full Screen Mode also maximizes Photoshop and the active canvas. The only items visible are

the palettes and the Options bar. This is a useful mode when you want to display your work to

someone without any clutter. Press the Tab key on the keyboard and hide all palettes and the

Options bar to get them out of the way of your masterpiece.

Click the Edit in ImageReady button at the bottom of the toolbox (see Figure 3.15) to close the file in

Photoshop and reopen it in ImageReady. Closing and reopening the file in this way prevents loss of

changes and creates two open versions of the same file.

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Figure 3.15The Edit in ImageReady button.

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using the photoshop toolbox - pearson educationchapter 3: using the photoshop toolbox the toolbox...

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